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Posted by 5 months ago

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42Conversion of CBD to THC with citric acid and water-based
 extraction
Before we start - my intention with this guide is to show people that possessing basic
cooking skills and equipment qualifies you to turn CBD into THC! For too long, the person
who just wants to chill out and get stoned has been forced to exchange excessive money for
THC, but no more! CBD is generally available for sub-$1/gram and can by converted to THC
like 90% efficiently using relatively common cooking ingredients, techniques, and
equipment (and some lab ware!) Thanks to inspiration from this sub to get me started and
my brothers in science who have inspired me to apply my knowledge to the age old problem
of “how do I get stoned with less labor?”.

This technique strives to be as simple and as approachable as possible. I'm not a chemist,
I'm just a tinkerer who hates overpaying in general and especially for THC. I think this
technique is about as simple as can be, it was important to engineer a process I couldn't
screw up and could perform with minimal equipment. To keep this safe, we only use food-
grade ingredients and you should only eat the product, you should be able to eat any
ingredient at any step of the reaction and get irritation at worst. If you perform this
technique, you'll have incredibly pure THC that doesn't cost much more per gram than your
source of CBD.

Ingredients and ratios:

CBD isolate (isolate preferred, distillate acceptable also, higher purity is better). “hemp
depot” has good prices, you can get CBD for less than $1/gram if you look hard
enough
as-of May 2022, you shouldn't pay much more than $600/kg for CBD isolate
Food grade citric acid (start with something on the order of 100-500 grams)
Baking Soda (get a container at the grocery store)
Pure water (use distilled water if you’re unsure of what this means or how to measure
water quality, you’re looking for water with fewer than 50 PPM of total dissolved
solids)
You’ll want ice cubes, a few ice cubes should be enough but make sure they’re
made of pure water
You'll need to boil some of this eventually, make sure you can heat and handle
the boiling water without contaminating it. A clean GLASS cup should be enough
Equipment (this will change as your batch size changes, I normally cook
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this is the equipment setup that I think is most rational, adapt these to your use case):

Scale with .01 gram precision (at least 100 grams of max capacity) - $20
Labasics 200 mm graham condenser with 24/40 joint - $20
The water jacket should accept ½ inch tubing
24/40 glass stopper - $10 optional
A small submersible water pump (like 5 watts)
make sure you get enough lifting height, if you're not sure try to get at least 1
meter of lift height) for your setup
get a half-inch nozzle if you follow the condenser recommendation (you’ll want to
match your water pump nozzle size to your condenser’s water nozzle size) - $5
½ in plastic tubing - $10
Container to hold water and your pump (shoot for at least 2 gallons) - note that this
won’t be exposed to chemicals, you can use a mixing bowl or VERY LARGE tupperware
24/40 boiling flask (I got 250 ML, you’ll want to use less than half the capacity - 125 ml
is enough space to convert ~70 grams or so)
Your choice on whether to get a round bottom or flat bottom
A stand to hold your equipment (consider United Scientific SSB6X9)
Clamps to hold the equipment (consider EISCO CH0688)
You need at least one, but ideally two: one for the boiling flask and one for the
condenser
Heating plate-
You’ll want something with magnetic stir capabilities, the most basic hot plates with
the stirring are $60-$80, you’ll need to figure out how to measure the temperature of
the solution inside the flask if you do this though
Heating plates with thermal control capabilities start art $200, buy once cry once -
you’re going to make THC for sub-$1/gram - you probably pay $20-$40/gram for it
now, just invest in the good equipment now and recoup the savings in the future
Magnetic stir bars (if not included in with your hot plate or you want more sizes)
Stainless steel strainer
Bowl (you can use a clean kitchen bowl that’s glass or non-stick, just wash it well before
using it for food)
Glass or silicone containers for the final product
silicone spatulas for handling
Coffee filters (optional)
IR thermometer - $15, just useful to have to check temperatures

Procedure

Vision for the process: When CBD is exposed to acidic solutions, the CBD molecules
undergoe isomerization which means they are reconfigured into THC. There are multiple
types of THC, the process first converts CBD to THC-delta-9 (the type most commonly found
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 most people prefer this type) and ultimately to THC-delta-8
in plants, (a less psychoactive
variety of THC). After isomerizing the CBD into THC, we will neutralize the acid which
converts the citric acid into sodium citrate and use water to separate the THC from the
sodium citrate.

Steps:

Set up your equipment

Find a spot for the heating plate, put your flask on top of the plate, and ‘test fit’
everything without loading any material in the beaker
Put your condenser on top of the beaker, use plastic tubing to attach the water
pump to the water jacket of the condenser
Pro tip: attach your pump to the lower water nozzle on the condenser, this
will ensure your pump fills the condenser and the condenser works as
effectively as possible
Prepare the reaction
It’s very important to get the right mixture of ingredients here
Even ~7% less citric acid than required will reduce your reaction efficiency
dramatically
Using too much citric acid will make extra sodium citrate which means for
filtration later
You need to use Water and Citric acid in a 1 gram water to .15 gram citric
acid ratio regardless of how much water you use
You should use at least 2 grams of water (and .3 grams of citric acid) per
gram of CBD you want to isomerize
You can use more water per gram of CBD but make sure you use .15 grams
of citric acid for every gram of water, you should only do this if you’re
reacting fewer than ~3 grams of CBD or so, after 5 grams, there should be
enough water normally that this is reasonably easy to handle
Select however much CBD you want to convert (this process should be around
90% efficient at converting CBD to THC)
For each gram of CBD, measure out two grams of water and .3 grams of
citric acid (15% solution)
For 10 grams of CBD, use 20 grams of water and 3 grams of citric acid
Put the measured amounts of CBD, water, and citric acid in the flask, the order
doesn’t matter
Put the flask between the condenser and the hotplate, heat the solution inside
the flask to boiling and run the magnetic stirrer between 200 and 1000 RPM (or,
as high as possible without the magnet flying out of control or splashing your
solution)
My hotplate has a temperature controlled heating pad, I set the pad to ~130
degrees C and put the flask with the solution on top in a round bottom flask
with a lot of foil to conduct and insulate heat
Run the reaction
 After your solution is boiling and getting mixxed, run it forLog In Sign Up
~8 hours while under
reflux (boiling under the condenser) where it’ll have a ~50/50% ration of delta-9
and delta-8 THC. Running the reaction longer will convert the delta-9 THC to
delta-8, after 12 hours or so, it should be entirely converted to delta-8.
Neutralize the Acid
Tip: At this point, I normally stop the heat and pull off the condenser apparatus
and drain it/set it aside, and keep the stirring going while pouring in the baking
soda
Pour in 1.31 grams of baking soda for each gram of citric acid
if you’re following along for 10 grams of CBD, that’s 3.93 grams of baking
soda
I normally don’t pour in all the baking soda at once, I start by dumping in ~90% of
the baking soda and adding the rest slowly, if you pour in baking soda and
there’s no fizzing, it may mean the acid is fully naturalized
Check the PH if you can, add baking soda to fully neutralize solution
Get ready to separate the THC and water / sodium citrate
Put your ice cubes in a stainless steel mesh strainer
put strainer over a bowl to catch water
pour the contents of your beaker out over the ice slowly - the goal here is to pass
as much water as possible over the ice so that the THC will crystalize
70-80% of your THC will congeal together (this will be bound up with sodium
citrate) in the stainless steel mesh
Your choice on how much you want to filter and try to conserve the THC in the
water/sodium citrate, it’s best to discard the fluid down the sink or run it over a
coffee filter and try to operate out the THC
Solventless extract
Right now, your THC is bound together with sodium citrate, you need to separate
the two. Luckily, sodium citrate is water soluble and THC is not, we’ll use this
property to separate out the two
Begin Loop until you have something clear (3x to 5x rinses)
Pour your hot THC (read: liquid) THC into a stainless steel mesh with ice
cubes, pouring directly on top of the ice cubes
With your THC in the stainless steel container, remove the Ice cubes
you can rinse the solution over the sink with cold water if you want, briefly,
this helps a little, discard the rinse
prepare to catch hot THC and water under the stainless steel mesh
pour boiling, pure water over the THC and stainless steel mesh - the boiling
water liquifies the THC allowing sodium citrate to dissolve in the water
If your THC / water solution gets cold, you can put it in the microwave, just
be careful not to let the THC get above 220 degrees or so
this was your first rinse, congrats!
 To repeat, Pour your hot THC (read: liquid) THC into a stainless steel mesh
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 with ice cubes, pouring directly on top of the ice cubes
When you’re finished, just take your THC crystals/solution and put it in a container and
let the rest of the water evaporate
Finished! Now dab it or eat it
Technically, you can eat this before this is neutralized, but best to neutralize the
acid before eating

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· 5 mo. ago

Any chance of a video please?

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OP · 5 mo. ago

I’m thinking about doing an Instagram reel but I’m not sure how much effort i
should take to anonymize the video.

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· 3 mo. ago

if my english was better i would try it

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Comment deleted by user · 5 mo. ago

OP · 5 mo. ago

I haven’t fully measured but it’s quite high - if i start with 10 grams of CBD, I can
easily recover 7 grams of final product and as high as like 9.5 grams if I’m really
 careful about the filtration. With CBD costs in the $0.50/gram range, I don’t care a
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 about handling everything super carefully and extracting every
ton last gram.

I haven’t analytically tested the composition of the final product, I just know it gets
me high with doses comparable to the doses of concentrate I buy legally (which
strongly suggests a high concentration of delta-9 thc).

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· 5 mo. ago

yield efficiency? he literally said 90% efficiency at least twice, otherwise the yield
depends on how much cbd you're working with

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· 5 mo. ago

Great text for noobs!

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OP · 5 mo. ago

If you’re a noob who can spare a few hundred dollars in lab equipment and is
interested, give this a shot! This is way better than buying it at $20+ gram! Forget
drug dealers!

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· 4 mo. ago

Im wondering about filtration process

What do you think about this method

1. After reflux while thc/water/sodium sitrate mix is still hot pour it into a glas
container and catch the thc/ parts with a cold metal spoon
2. Put thc/sodium citrate blend back into reflux container with pure water and heat
it up until liquids, mix together with magnetic stirrer
3. Put the thc back into glas container and discard water in reflux container, repest
processes if necessary

This sounds like it would have higher yield and you dont need to mess with
strainer/ice cubes

I would love your input on this

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OP · 4 mo. ago Log In Sign Up

Maybe possible if you can keep the reflux container above the melting point of thc-
I think the phase change is essential to clearing the sodium citrate that’s bound
together with the thc.

But the thrust of this technique is iterative dilution, youll want to reduce the
amount of sodium citrate in the solution by a factor of 100, so you need a decent
amount of pure water to do so. Reflux flasks don’t lend themselves pouring stuff in
and out. A lot and making sure you don’t pour out your thc?

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